Part of our wider Drone Services across Mauritius and the Indian Ocean.

DCA registration, foreign pilot recognition, and flight authorisation for international aerial units arriving with their own drones

This page is for productions arriving in Mauritius with their own foreign drone team. If you instead want to engage one of our local aerial units (Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar, Réunion, Maldives) with our own DJI fleet and locally-registered pilots, please see our Aerial and Drone Filming Services page. Two different services. This page is the regulatory pathway, that page is the creative aerial offering.

Most major productions, feature films, prestige documentaries, broadcast natural history, high-end commercials, fly their own aerial unit. They do this because aerial cinematography is specialised, high-risk, and built on trust between the director, the DOP, and a pilot they have worked with before. The aerial team usually flies in from London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Cape Town, or Mumbai with their own drones, their own gimbals, their own pilot, and their own foreign-issued competency certificate. None of that is recognised in Mauritius until it has been registered, authenticated, and authorised locally by the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA). That is the gap this page is about.

Identical Media handles the full DCA workflow on behalf of foreign production companies, broadcasters, and documentary producers whose aerial team is not local. For us this is routine work. The last three productions we cleared the way for include BBC natural history, Open Planet, and a current city project, with two more drone approvals delivered in close succession, which gives us live working knowledge of how the regulator is moving right now. The same pipeline has run for Netflix features and studio features (including Serenity, where the aerial team flew in from South Africa).

We do not own your drone, we do not fly your drone, we do not stand in for your pilot. We do exactly what a leading local service production company should do: open the door at DCA, keep the file moving, and make sure your aerial unit can actually fly on the dates you have planned.

What the regulator separates, we separate

DCA does not treat “drone permission” as one thing. There are four distinct workstreams, and missing any one of them grounds your unit. We manage each of them in parallel and brief your line producer at every stage.

1. UAS Registration (the drone itself)

Every drone with a camera or any data-capturing device must be registered with DCA, including drones used solely for recreational purposes. Toy-class drones with no camera, used indoors or strictly on private premises, are out of scope.

For drones already registered overseas (a US Part 107 registration, an EASA registration, a UK CAA registration, etc.), DCA requires:

  • proof of registration for both the drone and the operator
  • a copy of the operator’s passport
  • a photo of the drone (front view)
  • a photo clearly showing the drone serial number

For drones not yet registered anywhere, the production must either register in the home country before travelling, or apply for fresh Mauritius registration under Regulations 5 and 7. We strongly recommend the former. The Mauritius pathway is slower because it includes police clearance.

We compile the file, submit it through DCA’s published channels, and follow up at the Department until the unique Mauritius registration number is issued. We also handle annual renewal of UAS Operator registration where productions return season after season.

2. UAS Operator and Owner Registration

The owner of the drone and the operator flying it must both be registered with DCA under Regulation 7. For a production, the “operator” is usually the foreign production company or the foreign aerial unit, and the “owner” is whoever physically owns the airframe. These are two separate records inside DCA’s system, both of which we open and maintain.

3. Operating Authorisation (the actual permission to fly)

This is the document most foreign productions assume “registration” already gives them. It does not. Once the drone and operator are on record, you still need an Operating Authorisation matched to the kind of work you are doing. DCA uses three categories:

  • Open Category for operations that present low risk to third parties. Most travel content, real estate, light tourism work, and small wildlife jobs sit here.
  • Specific Category for operations with higher risk, but not the level of risk posed by a manned aircraft. Most TV commercials, feature film aerial units, and broadcast documentary work sits here, particularly anything flying near talent, near roads, or close to congested areas under safety mitigations.
  • Certified Category for operations as risky as a manned aircraft. Rarely relevant to film work.

For each category, DCA requires a specific application form (Open or Specific), an Operations Manual, a Compliance Checklist, third-party liability insurance, and a Remote Pilot Competency Certificate. We prepare and submit the application bundle, draft or adapt the Operations Manual to the production, and front the safety case with DCA. For long-running productions or fleet operators, we can also apply on your behalf for a Light UAS Operator Certificate (LUC), which gives one umbrella authorisation across multiple flights and crews.

4. Foreign Operator and Pilot Recognition

A foreign Remote Pilot Competency Certificate is acceptable to DCA when it has been issued by a training organisation recognised by the Civil Aviation Authority of the country where that organisation is located. That covers the great majority of EASA, UK CAA, FAA, and CASA-aligned certifications. The certificate still has to be presented to DCA, authenticated, and tied to a named pilot in the operator file. We manage that process so that by the time your DOP, aerial DP, or specialist drone operator arrives, the file is already cleared and the named pilot is on record.

Adjacent clearances we manage in the same pass

The four workstreams above are the DCA core. Three more clearances usually need to run in parallel, and we handle them as part of the same package.

ICTA type approval. Under the ICT Regulations 2019, any ICT equipment imported into Mauritius must be cleared by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority. Most mainstream airframes are already type-approved, but heavy-lift cinema platforms, FPV rigs, and modified payloads often are not. If your drone is not on the ICTA list, we apply for type approval through the ICTA Online Portal as part of the workflow.

Direct Remote Identification (DRI). Every drone operated in Mauritius must transmit its registration number, position, and route in real time, either through a built-in DRI feature or an add-on module. We verify your airframe meets the First Schedule before submission so DCA does not bounce the application back.

Airspace clearance. Mauritius airspace includes the SSR Control Zone, restricted and prohibited areas listed in AIP ENR 5.1, the chart at AD 2-FIMP 40.1, and a 150 metre buffer around congested areas. We map the locations on your call sheet against those zones in advance, coordinate any required clearance with Air Traffic Control on your filming days, and flag any spot that will not be cleared so the locations team can adjust before the shoot.

What we deliver to the production

A clean, DCA-recognised file containing UAS registration, operator and owner registration, the appropriate Open or Specific Category authorisation, and a foreign pilot recognised against that authorisation, with insurance, ICTA, DRI, and airspace clearances all wrapped into one submission. We brief your line producer at each step, we keep the Department on the file, and we maintain the relationship so future seasons of the same production move faster than the first.

We also tell you the truth about timing. Statutory registration takes a minimum of three months because it includes police clearance. We mitigate that aggressively where the production is on a shorter prep, but we never promise what we cannot deliver. The earlier your locations team can give us a flight plan and a kit list, the cleaner the run.

Productions we have cleared

The honest answer is: nearly every production with aerial coverage we have ever serviced. Foreign drone teams cannot fly in Mauritius without going through this process, so the file lands on our desk on essentially every job.

A non-exhaustive sample:

  • Netflix features with international aerial units
  • Studio features including Serenity, where the aerial team was sub-contracted out of South Africa
  • BBC natural history production
  • Open Planet documentary work
  • A current city project still in clearance
  • A long tail of TVCs and documentaries flying everything from compact Mavic and Inspire rigs to heavy-lift cinema platforms

We do not publish full client lists or named case files on this page. Specific titles and references are shared on request, under NDA where required.

Penalties for getting it wrong

Operating a drone in Mauritius without proper registration or authorisation is an offence under Regulation 22 of the 2024 Regulations. A conviction can carry a fine of up to one million rupees and imprisonment of up to twelve months. International productions will also lose their footage and risk their EDB rebate qualification on any non-compliant shoot day. There is no upside to flying grey.

Beyond Mauritius

The same logic applies across the region. Seychelles, Réunion, Madagascar, and the Maldives each have their own civil aviation rules for unmanned operations. We can advise on, or coordinate, drone clearance across all five destinations as part of a single regional service package.

Talk to us before you write your shooting schedule

The best moment to involve us is at scout stage, not at call sheet stage. Send the airframes you plan to fly, your pilot credentials, and your top three locations.

Email: contactmauritius@identicalpictures.com
Direct: ah@identicalpictures.com (Andreas Habermeyer)

We respond inside one working day.